I asked myself why I wanted to try my hand at blogging, and here's what I came up with:
If there's one thing I learned through my countless hours of English in high school, it's that I don't like writing on assigned prompts. You know the type, the prompts that you have no more personal connection to than a lion does to Antarctica. After many essays, I learned to write how the reader wanted me too; I gave my arguments, I gave my evidence, and I did it in the way that English teachers across America would want me to. Most of the time, the only emotional connection I had to my essays was to the numerical value and letter at the top of them when my teacher returned them to me. Now there were a few, a select few, that I didn't mind writing and wouldn't mind reading again. With most of them though, however, even I get bored halfway through the second paragraph.
There are people in the world that enjoy that kind of thing, and to them, writing on assigned prompts is fun. Me, I'm that freak that does calculus for fun. I seriously downloaded all of the free-response sections from every AP Calculus test that College Board had online, all with the intention to try and work them one day just to see if I can. I'm a freak of sorts.
That all being said, one thing I have found is that I do enjoy writing, but only when I decide what to write or when it's about something I enjoy talking about. My essay I submitted for my National Merit Finalist application? It was a down-right amazing essay because I wrote about my best friends and their influences on my life, and those are people I could talk about all day long. I'm also very proud of my valedictorian speech, because, hey, I had been looking forward to giving that thing for four years, and I was determined for it to be awesome. From all the compliments I got, I assume I achieved that goal. I even heard that a quote from my speech was being tweeted and retweeted that night after graduation. That's really cool (I don't have a twitter FYI). The paragraph I wrote about the teacher I selected as Star Teacher? I love it just as much as I love her (which is a whole awful lot). Her paragraph about me was equally as flattering.
Now I say this in the least cocky way possible when I say that I don't know which of those three things is my most favorite thing that I've ever written. Most people I'm assuming would say the valedictorian speech, because, you know, it's a pretty big deal. But my Star Teacher paragraph really was the perfect explanation of why I think my English/PSAT teacher is by far the best teacher ever and why she's such a fantastic person. And plus it's in everyone's yearbooks permanently. Very few people will ever read my National Merit Essay, but trust me, it had my heart and soul in it. The thing about those essays is as follows: the National Merit people basically expect you to write an essay about an important moment/person in your life and in the process pour out your heart and soul to them. They want to feel your emotion, they want to know why this moment/person is so important to you. I struggled for a few days trying to decide what to write about, trying to ignore the elephant in the room that I knew I should write about. I just didn't think I could tell a complete stranger all about that. But as I was talking to my Star Teacher about how I still didn't know what I wanted to write about, she looked me in the eyes and said, "You know what you need to write about," and I did, and I went home that night and wrote the first paragraph in only about fifteen minutes. I only had to do minimal revisions on it. Most of it came straight from my heart, and I suppose when you're writing about your best friend since kindergarten, that's the only place it could come from.
Long story short, I've got opinions and I love typing them out. It gives me a chance to think about them and why I feel that way. Sometimes it's just for me to get it out of my system, like I'm venting to my computer because I don't want any human being to hear the things I'm saying. It's probably a pretty safe system, because who knows what kind of mess I'd be in if I had typed those things in a text message as opposed to the word document they're safely saved away on.
So who knows what all I'll write about, all I know is it will be about something, and that something will be something I care about.
So let the blogging begin.
Mo
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